Should I dump this milk?

jam1111

I had a business trip from Wed-last night. I pumped Thurs and Fri's milk in storage bags. The milk was refrigerated properly the whole time. I left for the airport yesterday afternoon w/ about 50 oz stored in a small cooler w/ 3 frozen gel packs. Yesterday's flights were hell (midwest) and I traveled a total of about 12 hours. The milk used the ice packs as refrigeration the whole time and obviously got less and less effective over time. I felt the packs when I got to my home airport and they were a bit chilled still (not quite room temp) but I wouldn't call them "cold" just cool. I got them on ice for the drive home. I smelled a bag when I got home and it smelled a bit foul but I smelled a thawed one from my freezer stash and it smelled kind of foul too. (The fresh expressed smelled ok). So, should I dump it all? Thanks!

orthomom

I would smell each bag and toss the ones that don't smell good. Some of them may have stayed cooler plus the ones that were fresher may be ok.

ibis

I'm a little confused by your timeline so I'll just say this: milk is only good in a cooler w/ ice packs for 24 hrs. A cooler will never be as cold as a refrigerator. It sounds like your milk was in coolers for at least 24 hrs but I'm not sure.

dusk42

I also think that how many icepacks compared to how much milk you have makes a difference.  I use at least three icepacks just for 8 ounces of milk and my pump parts for 6 or so hours.

jam1111

Lugging that stuff around the airports for 12 hours and I still dumped it. So frustrating but not worth the risk. Thanks everyone.